Friday, May 26, 2006

National High Tech Crime Unit website closed

"If you are a member of the public wishing to report a crime or criminal attempt, please contact your local police force within your country of residence. Details of UK police force contacts can be found at www.police.uk"

So there you go. Need to report a high tech crime? Report it to the local police station, assuming it's not after 6pm or a weekend otherwise you're buggered.

Update: Just found this in Hansard

Margaret Moran: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he plans to replace the contact service formerly provided via the National Hi-Tech Crime Unit website.

Mr. Coaker: The National Hi-Tech Crime Unit (NHTCU), as part of the National Crime Squad, became part of the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) on 1 April 2006 and now operates under the title of SOCA e-Crime. The NHTCU was never a crime recording centre and always requested members of the public to contact their local police force. The NHTCU provided a website that contained a great deal of advice relating to harm reduction and awareness surrounding the use of computers and the internet. The content of the website has been saved and discussion is ongoing as to the most appropriate location for this to be available. Organisations and members of the public who wish to report a crime should continue to contact their local police force in the normal way.

I guess that means SOCA do the job now but you still have to go to your local police first. Problem is they closed all the police stations near me!

3 comments:

I wonder who thought up this great scheme. The minutes of the meeting must have gone:

"Let's close a crime unit before we have a replacement. We should remove access to all of the information this unit produced, and replace it with a message telling them to go elsewhere, so the general public feel safer at night, knowing that we have thought of them. All say 'AYE'.